Poll: Record 69% oppose Afghanistan war

In the wake of controversies involving the burning of Qurans and a U.S. Army staff sergeant’s alleged murder of 17 Afghan civilians, support for the war in Afghanistan has dropped precipitously among the American public, a new survey shows.

Indeed, 69 percent of respondents said that the United States should not be involved in Afghanistan, the highest ever measure since CBS News/New York Times started asking the question in 2009.

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In addition, a majority — 53 percent — said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, report the two news outlets. Only 23 percent believe that America is “doing the right thing” by fighting in Afghanistan, down from 36 percent in Nov. 2011.

These perceptions appear to be led by the impression that the war is going quite poorly for the United States — 68 percent thought the war was going “somewhat badly” or “very badly,” a staggering rise from the 42 percent who believed this in November, the Times poll found.

There was a general consensus among both Republicans and Democrats that the war is not proceeding well. Among Republicans, 60 percent said that the war was going somewhat or very badly, compared with 68 percent of Democrats.

The difference when it comes to members of the two parties is that Republicans were more likely to want to stay in Afghanistan for as long as it would be necessary to stabilize the country’s condition: three in 10 said the U.S. should remain, compared with two in 10 independents and 1 in 10 Democrats.

And within the Republican Party itself, voters are split over the issue of when to withdraw from Afghanistan. A plurality of Republicans, 41 percent, say that the U.S. should withdraw sooner than the planned withdrawal date in 2014, compared with only 28 who prefer the existing timetable and 29 percent who believe American troops should stay as long as it takes.

The CBS News/New York Times poll was conducted March 21-25 with a sample size of 986 adults. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Readers' Comments (16)

Of course Repubicans want to stay "as long as necessary to stabilize the country" ie forever. The GOP is the warmongering party. McCain wants us to bomb Syria, and the GOP presidential candidates are beating the drums of war against Iran, thus raising the price of gas.

We went into Afghanistan because of 9/11, but as reported in The 9/11 Commission Report, page 147, the 9/11 mastermind said he hates us because of our biased support of Israel. Due to Israel's illegal occupations, etc, it is hated around the world inviting revenge attacks as occurred recently in Toulouse where the shooter said he killed Jewish children in revenge for Israel's murders of hundreds of Palestinian children in Gaza.

The Taliban did not hit us on 9/11 and even offered to give up bin Laden if we provided evidence of his involvement (BBC and others 9/13/01). Rather than trashing Afghanistan, starting a civil war, and bringing back opium poppy cultivation which had been successfully banned by the Taliban, we should have pushed Israel to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and international law by ending the occupations.

In a full page ad for Rachel Maddow's new book in today's New York Times, it is surprising to read a quote from Roger Ailes of Fox stating that Maddow makes valid arguments that we've been drifting toward questionable wars. The first one, Afghanistan, is in fact said to have been inspired by Ailes himself. We previously had gone after terrorists by counterterror or police tactics, however, as reported in Bob Woodward's book Bush at War, Ailes called Bush after 9/11 and urged harsh measures. Thus the fiasco.

Currently we are supposedly in Afghanistan to train the Afghans but they keep shooting us. Of course no one like occupiers. Look at Israel. Occupiers who foment civil wars are even more hated. We were hit on 9/11 because of our support of Israel's brutal occupations, and then we morphed into Israel and became hated occupiers ourselves. The US/Israel alliance brought about a civil war in Palestine, and our invasions brought about civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan we allied with the drug-dealing Northern Alliance against the anti-drug Pashtun Taliban. The result is a corrupt narcostate where our aid money gets flown out of the country. No wonder Americans are fed up.

It's such a shame. If we had focused all of our resources in Afghanistan, and left Iraq alone, the situation would be much different. I personally believe we would've left Afghanistan by now, but that's debatable. We left Afghanistan on the back burner, and now it's a mess which is similar to Vietnam. I feel like we'll wind up retreating, but we will always remember this war as the war we could've won if we hadn't invaded Iraq.

Obama was wrong to re-escalate the Afghan war after the terrorist camps were destroyed and Taliban punished for harboring Bin Laden.

How the Left came to think of anything beyond that as being 'a good war' or 'the right war' is pretty mystifying. It seems more like a 'anything other than Iraq' nonsensical Bush Derangement Syndrome position than anything else.

As described in Bob Woodward's book Oama's Wars, Obama surged in Afghanistan on advice from Gates, Clinton, Mullen, Petraeus. This was a mistake. He should have listened instead to Biden, Eikenberry, McDonough, and all the others who were opposed. At least he put a timeline on it, much to distress of the neocons.

Obama is allegedly "Commander in Chief" but he is so weak and pathetic that the Democrats must attempt to blame the last President for everything that happens under the current POTUS watch. Time for little Barry to grow up and put on his big boy pants.

Obama's "good war". Obama's "right war". The war Obama ran on and touted. The war that Obama expanded after Bush had wisely gotten us out of there having known that Bin Laden wasn't in Afghanistan.

It still took the entire US government and the collaborative aid of multiple governments and agencies around the world -nearly ten years - to finally track him down to Pakistan.

Hate to break it to the retards of the world - but yes, fugitives can run for decades before they are caught. And some are never caught. Nevertheless it took all the work of the Bush years including Enhanced Interrogation to finally assemble enough information to have a percentage of a chance that Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan.

Oh, and Biden was against it. "The most audacious achievement in the last 500 years"? Pathetic.

Why does it take a poll for this country to realize Americans are losing their lives for nothing? Why don't we have a Commander in Chief leading the way? And making those tough decision for our men and women in uniform. We have not had a Commander in Chief in three and half years! We lost four Americans this week and not one single news media reported anything of it, instead the hightlight of the week was on Women votes and the Masters.

Unbelievable!! Especially when this country is spending billions a WEEK.............and we are up to our eyeballs in debt.............It is just unbelievable what this Command in Chief priorities are? I mean not even a word in passing, not even for the family's of these service members. Just think about this however, he did have something to say about the young black man who was killed in Florida but not any words or thoughts about our America's finest. Who are risking their lives every day. This is our Commander in Chief?